3 days ago
After 45 years watching politics, here's my last wish for this government and its big mandate
"Dear government, don't be terrible."
There was no greater sin in journalism, back in the day, than using the personal pronoun in your copy.
It has proved a good rule to follow over the past 45 years. Not just in a style sense but in terms of the state of mind in which you write: it's not about you, it's about your readers, or viewers even.
When this column resumes in July, it will be contemplating more global matters, instead of Australian politics.
But the transition, the fact that this is the last column on Australian politics, suggests a small amount of indulgence or reflection may be allowed.
Political reporting can often have a Postcards from the Edge feeling about it: a report from a very different jungle to the one most normal people inhabit, with hopefully a bit of translation and explanation thrown in for good measure about how and why politicians act as they do.
But this particular column aims to turn things around a bit: a postcard sent back to our pollies, with a few reflections drawn from four decades of having to watch them in action, close up.
First, as an indulgence taken purely on behalf of readers, let us agree that the federal Coalition can be put aside. That seems only fair, given that the Coalition seems so determined to be irrelevant.
Please come back, opposition MPs, when you've remembered what you are there for, or possibly when you have something more intelligent to say.
In the meantime, try not to embarrass us all with your apparent complete lack of reflection on why you may have not only been rejected by the electorate, but now represent less than a third of the House of Representatives.
You have stumbled around, splitting and reunifying, slagging each other off, on matters of "high principle" which seem to be completely malleable to the number of positions various parties get on the frontbench.
Instead, let's focus on the new government: the one that has won an exceptionally large number of seats in the House of Representatives and which is probably already doing stuff that's affecting us voters.
All governments are new after an election, whether they realise it or not, whether they have been in power for years or not.
There are inevitably some different bums on seats.
But more importantly, the context in which the government of the day is thinking about issues will have totally changed: both the economic and global circumstances, and the political circumstances.
What new governments can do with their numbers in the House and in the Senate is regularly discussed.
But what they are able to do (important distinction) or should do is discussed less.
Having watched many federal elections (14) and therefore many transitions of government, it is never clear that new governments quite understand how their mandates, or more importantly, their scope for action may have changed.
It's not just about the number of seats they hold in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
It's about the relative power of the other parties and the messages that the electorate seems to have sent.
And it's particularly about understanding what constraints that might have been shaping judgements for the past few years — constraints that have become so entrenched you don't even realised they are there — may have shifted or been removed entirely.
The 2025 election has been generally seen as a message of a rejection of the fringes — at both ends — and a move to the centre.
The prime minister has spoken about the idea of "progressive patriotism" as being central to his campaign
"We spoke about doing things the Australian way, not looking towards any other method or ideology from overseas," he said.
"At a time where there's conflict in the world, where people are often divided on the basis of race or religion, here in Australia, we can be a microcosm for the world."
So there's a nice thought.
But whether you want to prosecute a case for a nice thought, or a really complex policy agenda, you need to be both able and willing to sell it.
The political landscape for the past 15 years has been treacherous, starting with the hyper-aggressive politics of Tony Abbott's leadership of an opposition which sought to bring down the Gillard government on the floor of the parliament.
The biggest thing that the Albanese government has to get its head around is that the ultra-toxic nature of conservative attack politics has fundamentally shifted.
Sure, News Corp and its Sky After Dark franchise continues to prosecute a particular message.
But there is no clear and effective attack dog politician in the mould of Tony Abbott or Peter Dutton now obvious in the Coalition ranks.
And the ideological policy underpinnings which drove them — particularly Abbott — are also in splinters.
Think how that political agenda and it associated tactics have affected politics, and the caution of the Labor Party.
Labor embraced AUKUS, for example, without any apparent thought or contemplation, because it did not wish to be in a different position on foreign policy, defence and the US alliance to the Coalition.
This is not to suggest Labor should immediately abandon AUKUS. It's just that, with the Coalition in disarray, the prospect of Labor being in power for two terms, and US President Donald Trump apparently determined to make the US look like the world's most unreliable ally, Australia now has the space to consider what is actually in our best individual strategic interests.
That's a space we have effectively never been in before, given our obsession with Great and Powerful Friends.
There are so many other underlying presumptions about political norms generated by the Coalition: the ones on debt and deficits; on personal wealth; on migration and dog whistling on race.
Once again, it is not a question of overturning policy, just of having the clear eyes to rewire politics without the fear of these political attacks necessarily cutting through.
There's a couple of other ideas that are reinforced by watching a lifetime of political theatre.
The first is about only half remembered memories.
People speak ad nauseum of golden days when governments, and/or the parliament got things done.
From someone who lived and worked through those times: don't get sucked into all the stuff about how social media makes it harder. Believe that none of the tax reforms, the social welfare reforms, the energy reforms, or whatever, were actually easy.
Everything was fought, as it is now, tooth and nail, whether that be by the Hawke/Keating governments or the Howard government.
The arguments only started to fail when politicians got too tired to keep prosecuting them. When the exasperation with "dumb" journalists or voters got too much.
In a famous bit of correspondence originally reported in 2008, the former Hawke and Keating government minister, Gordon Bilney, wrote a letter to a local government bureaucrat once he was on his way out the door.
"One of the great pleasures of private life is that I need no longer be polite to nincompoops, bigots, curmudgeons and twerps who infest local government bodies and committees such as yours," it said.
"In the particular case of your committee, that pleasure is acute."
To those who knew him, it was very Gordon Bilney. But it reflects the exhaustion people in the political process inevitably feel, and which can be the most debilitating limitation on getting things through.
One of the smartest people to occupy a senior ministerial advisory post once said that he knew it was time to go when he found himself thinking, when confronted by someone lobbying on a policy: "don't you think we haven't already thought of that?"
There's a bit of that air around this government already. And if they are going to be successful in using this term to produce change, that has to change.
Another truism that has snuck into politics, particularly Labor politics, is that you can't have conflict in your ranks.
Well the finance minister, Peter Walsh, publicly advocated for a completely different set of tax reforms to those of the Treasurer during the Hawke years and the government did not fall.
A range of opinions is a good and healthy thing, and keeps a government (particularly one with a big majority) vibrant and credible.
So just accept — even welcome — some friction, particularly the sort of high class friction provided by figures like Ed Husic, who has demonstrated more decency, bravery and class on the vexed issue of Gaza than anyone else in the Parliament.
You are not all managing factions now, or a Labor Party conference. You are speaking for all of us in a world where opinions are rapidly changing.
Not being a terrible government means considering just what opportunities you have to change the conversation now that you are not wedged so savagely from the left and right.
A despairing Abraham Lincoln, desperate to get a general who would aggressively prosecute the war on the Union's behalf wrote to General "Fighting Joe" Hooker in 1863 in words which Australian voters might borrow in a letter to a government which has a once in a generation capacity to produce change:
"Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories."
And that is all that I can wish for Australian governments to deliver to its people, as I end four decades of keeping watch on what our governments do in our name.
Laura Tingle finishes this week as 7.30's political editor. She starts as the ABC's global affairs editor in coming weeks.
